Apple FY 1Q17 Earnings Call Notes

Especially strong demand for iPhone 7 plusWe might do acquisitions with repatriated moneyIndian demonetization was the right move

“That’s a really good question. Despite the demonetization move in India that created lots of economic pressure there last quarter, despite that, we had all-time record revenue results, and so we were very happy about that. The demonetization impact has not worked its way through yet. It’s still definitely having some overhang. But I think in the longer term, it’s a great move, and I feel really good about how we’re doing there”

Litigation vs. Qualcomm was a last resort

“I feel the same way I did in April of 2012. I don’t like litigation and view it as a last resort. And so you should take from our filing that we viewed it as we didn’t see another way forward. They were insisting on charging royalties for technologies that they had nothing to do with. And so we were in a situation where the more we innovated with unique features like Touch ID or advanced displays or cameras, just to name a few, the more money Qualcomm would collect for no reason and the more expensive it would be therefore for us to innovate. And so it’s somewhat like buying a sofa, and you charge somebody a different price depending upon the price of the house that it goes into. Just from our point of view, this doesn’t make sense, and we don’t believe it will pass muster in the courts. In addition to that, as a part of their increasingly radical steps they were taking to try to hold up that model, they withheld $1 billion in payments that they owed us. And so we felt like we had no choice was the net of it.”

See a lot of opportunity for the iPad

“If I zoom out of the 90-day clock and look at it, we’ve got some exciting things coming on iPad. I still feel very optimistic about where we can take the product. When we look at the number of people buying iPads for the first time, which is a good thing to look at from a point of view of whether things are reaching a penetration point or not, the numbers indicate that it’s not close to that kind of thing. The customer sat numbers are through the roof. Literally, the customer sat for the iPad Pro is 99%. It’s stunning.”

Luca Maestri

Iphone grew double digits in many markets including the US

“When we look at it geographically, I think we see different developments. For example, we felt very, very good about the unit growth that we had in many markets around the world. You’ve been quoting an overall total company growth rate. But when we look at a country-specific level, there were a lot of countries, I would say the majority of the countries, where iPhone units grew strong double digits, starting here in the United States, where for example, the fact that annual upgrade programs are becoming more and more popular is proving to be a positive for us. Same happened in a number of countries around the world, starting with Canada and Australia but also many places in Western Europe as well. Japan grew double digits in terms of units. So I think geographically we are seeing very, very good performance.”